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From his publication of the textbooks for his Jena lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre in 1794 to his move to Berlin in 1800, Fichte was met by both proponents and opponents of the Kantian philosophy with utter incomprehension and ridicule. During this time, he addressed the various misunderstandings and objections in a series of popular and extremely polemical works. These works, which include the "Vergleichung des vom Herrn Prof. Schmid aufgestellten Systems mit der Wissenschaftslehre" (1796), "Annalen des Philosophischen Tons' (1797), and the two introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre (1797), helped to clarify the nature of his project. In them, Fichte was markedly more derisive of the proponents of the Kantian philosophy (whom he ironically referred to as "the Kantians") than of its opponents (whom he plainly referred to as "dogmatists"). He portrayed the Kantians not only as the Stiefbrüder of the dogmatists but as an even more capricious lot than their kin.¹ The strain of his relationship with the Kantians stemmed not only from his infamous lack of patience and tact with those whom he thought did not have any business meddling with philosophy but from the gravity and urgency of the issue he saw to be at stake. In his eyes, the quarrel with the Kantians amounts to a battle against the relapse of the Kantian philosophy into dogmatism. It concerns the very nature, possibility, and fate of transcendental philosophy.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137412232_9

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